


Say Yes To The Dress: Citadel

by faithlessone



Series: Say Yes To The Dress [1]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Say Yes to the Dress Fusion, F/M, Fluff, Wedding Planning, Weddings, i love that that is already a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-25 01:10:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21347818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithlessone/pseuds/faithlessone
Summary: Finally, the day arrives that Shepard has been dreading. Actually dreading. She had been half-inclined to run, or hide, but two things stop her. Firstly, the fact that she’s fairly certain that there’s nowhere in the entire universe that Miranda couldn’t eventually find her, and secondly, she can’t stomach the idea of Mrs Alenko’s disappointed face.“You look like you’re about to be tortured,” Miranda says as they walk up to the most imposing entrance in the fanciest of the Citadel shopping districts. “Relax. This is going to be fun.”“Torture would be more relaxing. And fun,” Shepard mutters under her breath, but she forces herself into a neutral expression as the door opens and Miranda all but pushes her through it.“Welcome to Kleinfeld,” greets the receptionist. “Do you have an appointment?”
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard
Series: Say Yes To The Dress [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2004532
Comments: 11
Kudos: 25





	Say Yes To The Dress: Citadel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oOAchilliaOo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oOAchilliaOo/gifts).

> I suppose that technically this is part of the epic (EPIC) ME Soulmates AU that I have been writing for almost 5 years, but it's nowhere near ready for posting yet. However, my best friend asked me to write a SYTTD fic, and I loved it so much, I thought I'd share it anyway? There's really nothing you need to know about the AU, this fic does stand alone - but for clarity's sake, this is a Spacer Shepard, and for her backstory... think AOS Kirk, fall of the Kelvin and all. ♥
> 
> Happy N7 Day!

Finally, the day arrives that Shepard has been dreading. Actually _dreading_. She had been half-inclined to run, or hide, but two things stop her. Firstly, the fact that she’s fairly certain that there’s nowhere in the entire universe that Miranda couldn’t eventually find her, and secondly, she can’t stomach the idea of Mrs Alenko’s disappointed face.

“You look like you’re about to be tortured,” Miranda says as they walk up to the most imposing entrance in the fanciest of the Citadel shopping districts. “Relax. This is going to be fun.”

“Torture would be _more_ relaxing. And fun,” Shepard mutters under her breath, but she forces herself into a neutral expression as the door opens and Miranda all but pushes her through it.

“Welcome to Kleinfeld,” greets the receptionist. “Do you have an appointment?”

Miranda raises an eyebrow and glances at Shepard, who is beginning to wonder if she can survive Mrs Alenko’s disappointed face after all. It takes the poor girl a second, but then her eyes widen.

“Oh, Commander… Commander Shepard,” she stutters, face reddening. “I didn’t… Of course, _you_ have an appointment!”

“We’re a little early. The rest of the entourage will be arriving shortly, but I wanted the Commander to get her… ideas straight first,” Miranda says smoothly. “Is the consultant ready for us, or can we just have a look around?”

The receptionist’s look of panic doesn’t abate, but she points towards an arched entrance way behind her. “I’ll let her know where you are.”

After being practically dragged through the archway, Shepard is fairly sure this must be some kind of nightmare. The whole room is a sort of hazy pale cream and pink colour, all bright lights and soft fabrics and mirrors, the sum effect of which makes her head hurt. Miranda directs her towards the far side of the room, where various mannequins are displaying different dresses. The place is absolutely deserted, which must be unusual for a Saturday morning.

“Adora had them close today,” Miranda explains, reading her mind. “Something about security. And giving you the ‘celebrity experience’.” Then, in an undertone, she adds, “besides, it’ll make it easier for the cameras.”

Shepard freezes in her tracks, whirling on Miranda with fire in her eyes. “Cameras?”

Miranda grins, a little sheepishly. “Not in the dressing room. Just in the showroom here. And you’ll hardly notice them, I promise.”

“No one said anything about cameras. What are they for?”

“Just a little… _little…_ special episode of…” She tails off, directing her attention instead to a rack of candy coloured gowns that Shepard is going to point blank refuse to even try on. “Say Yes to the Dress: Citadel.”

Shepard has heard of the show. It’s been on forever in one shape or another, and it’s still big on the extranet among certain… demographics. She saw an episode once when she was a cadet, bullied into it by some of her friends. A whole lot of fuss about nothing, in her opinion. She certainly never would have agreed to be _on _it.

“Don’t I have to sign releases for that kind of thing?”

Miranda actually has the gall to _laugh_. “Remember the day you had to sign all those agreements about the arrangements for the wedding? I slipped the contract in after that extra-long one about the centrepieces.”

She has a dim recollection of signing a mountain of paperwork about flowers and seat covers and the precise number and style of forks per place setting. An hour in, the only thing she’d been looking at was where to sign her name, and mostly she’d just been trying to figure out what kind of punishment she could exact on Kaidan for tricking her into agreeing to do all of this while he was in a council meeting.

“Honestly, I was expecting you to throw it at me. But you didn’t even read it.”

She’s never signing anything anyone gives her ever again.

“Just filming in here?” she says, resigning herself to another thing about this Big Citadel Wedding that she’s going to hate for the rest of her life.

“Just in here,” Miranda confirms. “And then two or three or maybe _four_, pieces to camera. It’ll be over before you know it.”

She is about to try and argue that number down when a short blonde woman in a black ruffled dress steps up behind them, an anxious-but-pleasant smile on her face, reminding Shepard disturbingly of her irritating wedding planner.

And… speak of the devil.

“Commander, Ms Lawson, there you are,” Adora’s voice chimes loudly above the gentle background music that fills the room. “You’re early! Have you met my sister yet?”

Sister?

“My name is Darla, Commander,” the blonde greets her, excitedly. “I’ll be your dress consultant today.”

Shepard is completely unable to restrain herself from glaring daggers at Miranda, and planning something very painful and inconvenient in her immediate future.

*

A few minutes later, Shepard is corralled into a very large, very bright, very white dressing room on the other side of the salon. Miranda has been sent to find the rest of their absent entourage, so she is defenceless against the weaponised bubbliness that both the sisters seem to have in excessive abundance.

“So,” Darla says, beaming, all trace of her former anxiety evaporated. “What do you see yourself getting married in?”

“… a dress?” Shepard ventures, unsure. The automatic answer she’d given the first time Adora asked her that question had been her dress blues or her N7 armour, and neither option been particularly well-received.

Darla giggles effervescently. “Oh, Commander, you are funny. You won’t be wearing just a _dress_. You’ll be wearing a _gown_. I am under strict instructions to make certain that you’re the most beautiful, picturesque, incredible creation the galaxy has ever seen! Today is just to narrow down the neckline and the silhouette and the fabric and the embellishment and the sparkle. Then you’ll have your very own original, _of course_.”

Presumably that was also all in the documentation Miranda had tricked her into signing, and Adora hadn’t felt the need to tell her. Although, come to think of it, there had been a conversation, several weeks before, on the subject of dress _designers_, which she had entirely tuned out and told Miranda to deal with.

Damn.

She’s never going to tell Miranda to deal with anything else again.

“Right.”

“So… do you have any ideas? Thoughts? Ms Lawson gave me a few… inspirational images, but I like to hear from the _bride_ herself. It is your _special day_, after all.”

She decides to neglect to mention that the Big Citadel Wedding is not, in any way, shape or form, going to be her _special day_. Her _special day_ will be in an orchard fifty thousand lightyears from here, in a dress she doesn’t have to pick, because she’s borrowing the one that Kaidan’s grandmother wore. Not that he knows that yet, of course, and that thought makes her smile.

“There, whatever you just thought of,” Darla pounces. “Tell me.”

“Just… thinking about Kaidan,” Shepard decides to admit. A half-truth is better than trying to cover it up.

“That’s a good place to start too! What do you think Major Alenko would like to see you in?”

She manages to restrain the laugh that threatens to bubble up. From experience, she’d say that Kaidan’s favourite looks for her are either post-battle N7 armour and helmet hair, or wearing absolutely nothing at all.

Then she remembers the awestruck look on his face when she came down the stairs at the gala after the Battle of the Citadel, in that slinky Alliance-blue dress. The devastated expression he’d had when she let slip that she wasn’t even wearing underwear with it…

“What pictures did Miranda give you?” she says instead, changing the subject slightly.

Darla beams again and hands over a datapad, full of pictures of what look like very high-end designer dresses. There are a full range of styles and shapes in there, everything from cloud-like ballgowns to straight-up-and-down columns, and there’s almost _nothing_ in the entire collection that Shepard can picture herself in.

She pulls up one of the least objectionable options, and passes the datapad back.

“How about we start with something like that and see what happens?”

Darla takes a close look at the datapad, forehead creasing just ever-so-slightly in thought before she beams again. “I don’t think we have this exact dress, but I know one that has just this silhouette! I’ll go and get it. Do you want a drink while you wait?”

What she’d like is a glass of whiskey approximately the size of her head, but she assumes this isn’t what the consultant means.

“Whatever you have, thanks.”

Darla disappears, and a fraction of a minute later, Adora appears at the door with a tall glass of something light and bubbly, which she hands off to Shepard with a smile.

“Your entourage are all sat and ready for the first gown, Commander. All looking forward to seeing what you’re going to choose. Now, let’s have fun, but take it seriously, please. Remember, you are still the face of the Alliance.”

If there is one thing, _one thing_, that Shepard admires a little about Adora, it’s her talent of saying perfectly reasonable things with such a subtle but definite undercurrent of threat.

But there’s no way she can let Adora know that, so she just tosses a rather lazy salute her way, and takes a sip of her champagne.

*

From the moment Shepard is standing, in the first long white dress, staring at herself in one of the many mirrors while Darla does something complicated with clips at her back, she really regrets letting Miranda talk her into this. She thought she’d regretted it before, but her previous regrets were nothing compared to now.

The one in the picture looked good on the model, but this one on her is just… too much. Too much skirt, too much pattern, too much skin. There is a plunging neckline, translucent lace on her ribs, and a ruffled train at the back that she’s not going to be able to manage by herself.

She’s never been ashamed of her body; has worked too damn hard on it her entire life. But there’s a difference between her life up until this point, and being in a very brightly lit white room, standing on an honest-to-god pedestal, achingly aware that in a minute, she’s going to be judged on her looks alone, by not just her friends and the professionals being paid to do it, but millions, probably _billions_ of people she’s never even met. Judging her still-not-quite-up-to-pre-war-condition muscles, her battle scars, and her lack of abundant feminine curves.

So yeah, regrets.

“Ready?” Darla’s voice cuts through her self-critical monologue.

She’s not, she’s really not, but the faster she gets through this, the faster she can go home. And start working on the painful and inconvenient punishment she’s going to put Miranda through.

“As I’ll ever be!” she says, with faux-excitement.

Darla picks up the back of her dress, showing her how to lift the front too, and directs her back towards the showroom. Another pedestal has been set up in the middle of the room, with more of those blasted mirrors behind it, and she can see at least a dozen people lingering around the edges, camera equipment everywhere. In front of the pedestal is a fancy-looking sofa, with a couple of matching chairs, one at either end.

She recognises her chosen entourage from the backs of their heads, but there’s someone on the end of the line she can’t quite identify…

“Here she is!” Darla announces breezily, distracting her. “In her first ever wedding dress!”

It’s not. But Miranda and Mrs Alenko have been sworn to secrecy under pain of Shepard’s tears, which is much more effective than death, and no one else knows.

Darla leads her past the sofa, shepherding her onto the pedestal without a moment to stop and take in her friends’ reactions. It’s only when she’s allowed to, with a little careful rearranging, turn to face them, that she sees…

“Mother?”

Hannah Shepard is the head she couldn’t identify, looking about as awkward and out of place as it’s possible for someone to look. She offers up a half-smile, smoothing a non-existent wrinkle out of the uniform she’s wearing.

Shepard can count the number of times she’s seen her mother in person during the last five years on one hand, and she wouldn’t even need to use all her fingers. To her knowledge, her mother has never actually even officially met Kaidan. Her eyes dart to Miranda, who gives her the smallest micro-expression, but clearly says that she had _nothing _to do with this.

“You look… beautiful, Amelia,” her mother says, lips tight.

“You do, _mila_, but you don’t look very happy,” Mrs Alenko cuts in, soft and concerned.

She’s sat on the other end of the sofa, with Adora, Miranda, and Kasumi between them. Garrus, rounding out the party, is sat on the other chair.

“How do you feel about it?” she continues.

Shepard has rarely been lost for words. Talking has always been one of her talents. But right now, in such a completely alien situation, with her head filled with the worst thoughts, and her mother – her critical, disapproving, cold mother – right in front of her, she can’t think of a single thing to say.

“Not the one, I think,” Miranda offers, and Shepard nods.

“Perhaps… we could pick some things out for her?” Kasumi is already on her feet and heading towards the racks even as she speaks.

“Excellent idea,” Mrs Alenko agrees, getting up and following her. “Don’t you worry, _mila_, we’ll find you some perfect things.”

Miranda and Garrus follow suit; one understandably more excited about it than the other. Darla shoots Adora a somewhat concerned look, and then her wedding planner pulls her mother off to the racks too.

“Back to the dressing room!” Darla announces.

*

If she thought the first dress that she tried on was too much, it’s nothing compared to just how _much_ the second dress is.

“This is a ballgown?” she asks, as Darla fusses with the ribbons at the back.

“Oh, yes! With a sweetheart neckline and corset back, in diamond white tulle and organza, with real crystal and pearl embellishment, of course. Do you like it?”

There is so, so much skirt. She feels like she’s standing in the middle of one of the ridiculous eleven-tier wedding cakes that she also had to sign off on. Her arms can’t fall to her sides like they want to, so she holds them awkwardly in front of her. The top is so stiff with tiny clear jewels and white beads that it feels like a chest plate, which is the only thing she likes about it. Well, that and the crimson ribbon around her waist. (Though why it needs to be in quite such a dramatic bow, she isn’t sure.)

“Whose pick was this?”

Darla giggles. “That would be telling! We’ll do the reveal in the showroom, for the cameras. But can’t you guess?”

She has a sneaking suspicion on two people, but she’s not certain, so she stays silent.

“And the finishing touches!” Darla adds, pulling out what looks like twenty feet of net and a tiara, which both get settled onto her head.

The overall effect is presumably beautiful, but all she can think is that there is no possible way she can move in this one _at all_ without help, her arms are going to get tired and the tiara is going to give her a headache.

Once she gets out into the showroom though, it’s clear whose choice it was. Her mother looks like she’s been sucking on a lemon, and Kasumi’s eyes are sparkling bright under her hood.

“Do you love it? It’s the most expensive one I could find,” she says, as soon as Shepard is settled on her pedestal.

“Ideally I’d like to be able to get close enough to Kaidan to kiss him?” Shepard says, deciding to be somewhat honest, given that she doesn’t want to tell Kasumi just how uncomfortable she is. “It is traditional. I don’t think I could in this.”

Garrus is volunteered (as the best man and only person in the room tall enough to pretend to be Kaidan), to try. It’s awkward, and involves a lot of bending and contorting on both their parts. Eventually, they have to admit that at least one of them is going to fall over. And Kaidan isn’t even that tall.

“You could always fist-bump at the end of your vows?” Kasumi suggests, teasingly.

“Next!”

*

The third and fourth dresses, picked by Miranda and Mrs Alenko respectively, are much better, but still not quite… her.

Miranda’s pick is shiny, asymmetrical, structured and form-fitting, but with a slit up the side that means that Shepard can not only move freely by herself, but also bend and twist and (if necessary – and hell, it’s _her_ wedding, it might be necessary) fight in it. It gets a reasonable reaction in the showroom, but everyone else agrees that there’s just something not… quite… there about it.

Mrs Alenko’s pick is completely different again. Floaty lace, creamy and soft, like the family dress she’s going to wear for the real wedding, but with an actual _cape_ made from the same material as the veil Kasumi made her try. It makes her feel like a superhero, and everyone makes the appropriate impressed noises, but it’s just… too similar to her other dress. And she wants _that_ one to be special.

The fifth dress, she knows as soon as she sees it, has been picked by her mother. She wonders how long it took Hannah to choose it, or if she just told the consultants to find the plainest, most unexciting dress in the shop.

“This is a scoop-neck, high back, sleeveless, trumpet-style gown in ivory taffeta. No train, just to the floor. Very simple and _classic_,” Darla explains as she zips it up and steps away. It’s the least amount of fuss she’s had to make all day, and even Shepard can tell that she thinks the dress is boring. “Fits you like a glove though!”

She goes into the showroom anyway. Adora would kill her for publicly snubbing her mother’s choice, and for all the issues they’ve had in the past, Hannah wouldn’t be doing this maliciously. And it is… a _nice_ dress. Even if it’s not hers.

When she reaches the pedestal, she notices that her mother’s eyes are a little red, and if Shepard didn’t know better, she’d have thought Hannah had been crying. It also doesn’t escape her attention that Mrs Alenko has moved from one end of the sofa to the other, so now they are sat side-by-side. She sends a silent, questioning look to Miranda, who shrugs almost imperceptibly, and mouths ‘I’ll tell you later’.

Aside from that, the reaction is almost as she expects.

“It’s _nice_… but can we add some sparkle?” Kasumi asks, pulling a diamond-encrusted belt from the pile of shiny objects she now has on her lap.

(Shepard has no doubt that the pile of shiny objects is a decoy, and she has some much nicer stuff secreted somewhere on her person. She’ll get Garrus to frisk her before they leave the shop.)

“Or flowers?” adds Mrs Alenko, gesturing to a display of sample bouquets that Shepard hadn’t even noticed.

“Does it come in red?” Garrus asks.

“The bridesmaids are going to be in red,” Adora says, shutting him down with a glare that suggests this is not the first time she has had to repeat herself. Or the tenth.

Shepard doesn’t remember deciding that, but it does sound like something she would have picked. It is her favourite colour, after all.

However, all the sparkly belts and flowers in the shop aren’t going to change the fact that, unfortunately, this is the most boring dress in the galaxy. Before she lets Darla lead her back to the dressing room though, she turns to her mother, who has been surprisingly quiet throughout this entire experience.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picture of your wedding dress, ma’am. What was it like?”

A long pause follows, and Shepard regrets asking the question. There’s a perfectly good reason that she’s never heard about or seen pictures of her parents’ wedding, and that reason starts and ends with the events that happened on the day of her birth. But just as she’s about to apologise and take it back, her mother smiles.

“I didn’t have one. We got married in… a bit of a hurry. Spur of the moment. I was wearing my uniform. So was Nick… your father, I mean.”

“How romantic!” Darla says quietly, but Shepard barely hears her. She hasn’t heard her mother mention her father since… her N7 graduation? And even then, she’s fairly sure that Anderson had prompted it.

“Was this what you would have worn then?” She shouldn’t say it, but she can’t help herself.

Luckily, it actually makes her mother _laugh_. Another thing she hasn’t heard in years.

“No. Given the opportunity, I would have worn something more Ms Goto’s style.”

“Really?” Kasumi interrupts, delighted.

“Well, I was… substantially younger than Amelia when we got married,” she replies, and somehow it doesn’t feel like criticism. “Looking like a sparkly meringue was very much the fashion at the time, and I was barely out of my teens. But Amelia’s such a practical woman. She looked so uncomfortable with the lace and the ruffles on that first dress. I thought… It’s silly. I thought she might prefer something simple. She’s so beautiful, she doesn’t need a lot of fuss.”

Shepard has no idea what’s happening right now. She feels like she’s in some kind of strange parallel dimension where her mother is… considerate? Thoughtful? Complimentary?

Everyone else seems to have relaxed: even Adora isn’t holding herself with her usual rigidity. Mrs Alenko starts talking about her own wedding, and her own dress (strapless and lacy and apparently very uncomfortable – she got out of it as soon as possible – which is not something she ever wanted to know about her soon-to-be-mother-in-law). Mr Alenko wore his dress blues, and her mother interjects something about forcing her father to wear his, even if she hadn’t been in hers, and Miranda and Kasumi are hanging on their every word, and even Garrus looks interested.

…and suddenly all she wants to do is run.

“I need a minute,” she says, but if anyone hears her, she doesn’t wait to find out.

*

Back in the dressing room, she locks the door, and shoves a chair against it, just to be certain. Then she grabs her omni-tool from the table, typing out a quick message to the only person in the universe she wants to see right now.

Within moments, she gets a call back.

“Soulmate, tell me I didn’t just get an emergency evac request for you from… a bridal store?” he asks, his voice the perfect mixture of teasing and concern.

“Help,” is all she can say in return. Three lifetimes’ worth of inadequacy and pressure and rejecting her own desires to live up to an impossible standard that exists only inside her own head are threatening to make her explode. She’s never been comfortable with ‘girl stuff’, or ‘feeling emotions’, despite her female crewmates’ best efforts, and today has just been too much. Too much of everything.

“Shepard? Breathe. Breathe for me. I can almost hear your heart racing from here.”

She takes a deep breath, loud enough for him to hear over the comms. It helps.

“You okay? Too much tulle and glitter for you?”

“How do _you_ know what tulle is? I’m still not sure.”

He laughs. “Miranda left datapads of bridal magazines all over the apartment last time she was here. I was curious. Some very… interesting styles.”

The sound of his voice has almost as much of a calming effect on her as his presence would. “Yeah, anything you liked?”

“Hey, soulmate, you know I think you’d look beautiful in anything.”

“Yeah? Even those N7 sweatpants?”

He laughs again. “Adora would murder you. But I’d marry you in them anyway.”

She feels her heart get back to its normal rate, and tells him so.

“Just get through it, and come home. Only a few more months, and then we’ll never have to worry about any of this ever again.”

“I love you.”

“Love you too, soulmate. You can do this. See you soon.”

“See you soon.”

The call disconnects, and she pulls the chair away from the door, unlocking it and preparing to face the music.

‘One more dress,’ she tells herself. Just Garrus’ choice left, and if it doesn’t work, she’ll pretend to have a change of heart about Miranda’s pick and be done with it.

There’s a knock on the door.

“Shepard? You okay?” Miranda asks.

She opens the door, plastering a fake smile on her face. Miranda sees through it instantly, because of course she does, but thankfully she doesn’t call her out on it. Instead, she presses another glass of champagne into her hands.

“They asked your mom about your dad right before you came out in the dress she picked. Asked her if she wished he were here, if she thought he’d be proud of you. She got really quiet, tears in her eyes, and then told them that that was personal and this was supposed to be your day, not his. Mrs Alenko pushed the camera out of her face and gave her a hug, which just set her off worse.”

Well, that explains the red eyes and the unusually generous sharing of information. The camera-person got off lightly though. She’s personally witnessed her mother punch a reporter who asked too many personal questions.

Maybe this is a sign that she and her mother can bury the hatchet?

But they need to get through this first.

“One more dress?”

Miranda nods, smiling sympathetically. “I’ll send Darla in. I think you’re going to like Garrus’ choice. He was surprisingly… specific.”

‘Well, that isn’t terrifying at all,’ Shepard thinks, especially combined with Miranda’s grin and the fact they had clearly saved his for last. But she nods and steps back into the room.

Darla appears barely a few seconds later, carrying yet another dress bag over her arms.

“You might think this is a bit… unconventional, but I have a suggestion for trying on this one, and I think it would help you,” she says, bubbly as ever, despite what’s just happened.

“… what?” Shepard asks, suspicious.

Darla holds up what is clearly a white, silky blindfold.

“I don’t know what kind of woman you think I am, but this seems like the plot of something you’d find on the seedier side of the extranet.”

“You’d be surprised how often brides get overwhelmed in here,” she explains, her voice softer and more serious than it’s been all day. “All the choices, the opinions, the pressure to pick ‘the one’. It’s easy to nit-pick every outfit to death until you can’t even remember what you wanted in the first place. And you didn’t even _have_ something you wanted in the first place! But if you trust me, and let me put you in the whole ensemble before you see it, I think… I think it might help. Your friends were very, _very_ keen on this one. Mr Vakarian had a very clear vision in mind, and we had to get the seamstresses working flat out downstairs in alterations to make it work, but the final product, I think…”

“Fine. Blindfold me,” Shepard interrupts. Anything to stop her talking.

*

Darla won’t let her remove the blindfold until she is standing on the pedestal in the showroom. For a few moments, Shepard is utterly convinced that they’ve put her in something awful and hideous to give the audience a laugh. But that’s just the anxiety talking. She trusts her friends. She also knows that, even though Miranda had checked them all for weapons before they left the apartment, Kasumi keeps a tiny pistol concealed on herself at all times, and how to disarm her of it. Which is always a comforting thought.

There is nothing but silence and a few muffled inhalations that sound like gasps as she enters, holding Darla’s arm, and steps up onto the pedestal. Darla and someone else fuss around for a few moments, settling things, and then they step back. Shepard feels fingers at the back of her head.

“Ready? Three, two, one…”

The blindfold is pulled away, and Shepard takes just an extra moment before she opens her eyes, terrified of what she’s going to see.

When she does, however…

They’ve moved the mirrors so she can see the dress from almost every angle immediately. It’s… nothing like anything she would have picked on her own, and yet...

It’s silk, or something like that, she’s not sure. Light and comfortable. A pale silvery grey colour that makes her skin glow, rather than the stark white of Miranda and Kasumi’s picks, or the creams of her mother and mother-in-law. It’s high in the front, coming just below her collarbones, then sweeps over her torso, giving the illusion that she has curves. The skirt is fit just past her hips and then flares, a similar shape to the dress her mother picked out. Enough room to move easily. And the back? The silk dips low, almost to her ass, but instead of being bare above, it’s some kind of net, embroidered with what looks like a million tiny stars, hiding dozens of tiny buttons that explain why Darla was stood behind her for so long in the dressing room. The stars spill from the net down the back of the skirt, onto the shortest train she’s seen so far, just slightly trailing behind her. Like a waterfall of starlight. Like the whole milky way, cascading down her back. As she looks closer, she notices that some of the stars aren’t clear, or silver; they’re white, and black, and red. Alliance blue and gold. Biotic blue.

Then she looks up, and sees the tiny star pins in her hair. Just silver and black, shining against the red.

For the first time in the months since the Alliance told her, in no uncertain terms, that she and Kaidan had to hold a public wedding ceremony on the Citadel as well as the private one in Canada, she’s actually a little disappointed that it won’t be the real one. That this won’t be the dress she wears the first time she says “I do.” But it will be the dress that she wears when she says it for the _last_ time.

There are suddenly tears on her cheeks and she isn’t sure where they’ve come from. She reaches up to brush them away, and that’s when she notices the other faces in the mirror. Everyone behind her is sitting, with rapt attention. Waiting for her to react.

She turns; noting with no small amount of happiness that the action is easy, the dress flowing around her like water. It feels like everyone else in the room – friends, family and professionals alike – are holding their breaths waiting for her to speak. She lets the moment build just for a few extra seconds, before she meets Garrus’ eyes.

“It’s perfect,” she finally admits.

The whole room practically erupts, everyone talking over each other to praise her and the dress and Garrus’ keen eyes for choosing and editing it. Darla darts over to point out the changes that were made, describing it in the correct terminology, but Shepard tunes her out. It doesn’t really matter to her that the fabric is something called “charmeuse” or that the whole back panel had to be refitted so it would hug her spine perfectly.

She catches Garrus’ eye again and mouths ‘thank you’ at him. Too quiet for his translator to pick up, obviously, but she hopes he gets the message anyway.

Finally, everyone quiets down again, and Darla touches her arm lightly.

“So, are you saying yes to the dress?” she asks, more brightly and effervescently than she’s sounded all day. Which is impressive.

“I guess so,” Shepard responds, smiling.

Darla laughs, a little awkward now. “No, you’ve got to… say the line. For the show, you know? It’s traditional. Everyone does it.”

Oh. Oops. For a moment, she’d actually forgotten there were cameras on her. Recording every moment of this. She turns back to the mirror, letting her eyes linger across the perfect, seamless lines of the silk, the sparkle of the stars… Kaidan’s not going to know what’s hit him.

Then she lets out a steady breath.

“I’m saying yes to the dress.”


End file.
